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Full title: The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law. Nonfiction, about abortion practitioners in the US from the 1920s to the 1960s, before Roe v. Wade. Solinger focused on one woman practitioner in particular, Ruth Barnett, who operated on possibly a hundred thousand women over forty years and never lost a patient. Solinger also gave a really good idea of what those years were like, for women seeking abortions and for the medical practitioners who broke the law and provided abortions.
This book clearly had a slant on it--there are back cover blurbs from the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and from two directors of women's health clinics. Before you even open the book, it's obvious which way the author is going to spin the story. But there are a lot of things that aren't really spin-able in this history. For example, there was a high demand for abortions in the years before Roe, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s. Birth control wasn't readily available for most women, and during the Depression, lots of people simply could not afford another child. Ruth Barnett's services were always in demand, and most law enforcers were happy to look the other way--as a crime, abortion didn't compare with all the other illegal activities going on, especially when the woman didn't die. And Ruth Barnett operated an antiseptically clean clinic--she was nothing like the "back alley" abortionists we often hear about--so her patients rarely got infections.
It was really during the late 1940s and the 1950s that abortion became a moral outrage. It was during this time, the post-war years, that society began emphasizing the woman's place in the home and her important role as a mother, and police started cracking down on abortions. Practitioners like Ruth Barnett were highly visible, and so they caught the brunt of it. During these years, the number of self-abortions skyrocketed, as did the number of infections and deaths that resulted from botched abortions.
Solinger presents the history of the time period, based on interviews, newspaper articles, and court testimony. She rarely deviates from the history to make statements about our current times, but the implication is clear. Solinger makes a strong case for keeping abortion legal and safe. There will always be a demand for abortion--when women are educated about and have access to birth control, the demand decreases, but it's still there. And if abortions are going to happen, then they need to be practiced cleanly and safely, by trained practitioners. Otherwise, women go to extreme measures to control their fertility, and they die needlessly.
I'm really glad I read this book, because I honestly didn't know anything about the history of abortion before Roe. It's worth knowing about. I would recommend this book to dedicated pro-choice readers.
This book clearly had a slant on it--there are back cover blurbs from the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and from two directors of women's health clinics. Before you even open the book, it's obvious which way the author is going to spin the story. But there are a lot of things that aren't really spin-able in this history. For example, there was a high demand for abortions in the years before Roe, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s. Birth control wasn't readily available for most women, and during the Depression, lots of people simply could not afford another child. Ruth Barnett's services were always in demand, and most law enforcers were happy to look the other way--as a crime, abortion didn't compare with all the other illegal activities going on, especially when the woman didn't die. And Ruth Barnett operated an antiseptically clean clinic--she was nothing like the "back alley" abortionists we often hear about--so her patients rarely got infections.
It was really during the late 1940s and the 1950s that abortion became a moral outrage. It was during this time, the post-war years, that society began emphasizing the woman's place in the home and her important role as a mother, and police started cracking down on abortions. Practitioners like Ruth Barnett were highly visible, and so they caught the brunt of it. During these years, the number of self-abortions skyrocketed, as did the number of infections and deaths that resulted from botched abortions.
Solinger presents the history of the time period, based on interviews, newspaper articles, and court testimony. She rarely deviates from the history to make statements about our current times, but the implication is clear. Solinger makes a strong case for keeping abortion legal and safe. There will always be a demand for abortion--when women are educated about and have access to birth control, the demand decreases, but it's still there. And if abortions are going to happen, then they need to be practiced cleanly and safely, by trained practitioners. Otherwise, women go to extreme measures to control their fertility, and they die needlessly.
I'm really glad I read this book, because I honestly didn't know anything about the history of abortion before Roe. It's worth knowing about. I would recommend this book to dedicated pro-choice readers.
